The Western Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing is offering the following workshops:
Times: 7:00pm-9:00pm
Location: KCR, 120-1735 Dolphin Ave
Registration: Leslee Scott at moc.hhdiwnull@ttocsl or call 250.763.3562
- Limited seating available so please register early
- Assistive listening devices available
There are volunteers, and then there are volunteers.
Our community has great causes and great needs that can only be addressed by great volunteers. Being average and offering to put in time on occasion is not the way to create sustainable and deep impact.
Last week, Michael Lindenmayer wrote an article for Forbes that hit the nail on the head. It was called “7 Traits of Amazing Volunteers”. Here is his list.
We all want to be and to recruit amazing volunteers. Volunteer managers have a definite role in making that happen.
Thursday June 13, 2013 – Thursday June 13, 2013
1380 Ellis Street, Kelowna
Description:
An interactive educational workshop for parents, students and service providers
In his engaging, story-filled presentation, Dr. Michael Ungar will show how a child’s resilience depends on more than a child’s individual capacity to overcome challenges. Resilience is also the ability of young people’s parents and other caregivers to successfully help children navigate and negotiate for the supports they need to thrive. Troubling behaviors like violence and bullying, stealing, social withdrawal, avoiding responsibility for one’s self and others, internet addictions, drug abuse, truancy and early sexual activity can be addressed by providing young people with nine sources of resilience.
These nine sources include: structure, consequences, parent-child connections, strong relationships with peers and adults, a powerful identity, a sense of control, a sense of belonging, spirituality and life purpose, rights and responsibilities, and the safety and support children need to cope when problems arise. In this presentation Michael will share what he has learned from parents and helping professionals who have found inspiring ways to help children become competent, caring contributors to their families, schools, and communities no matter the challenges they face.
About the Presenter:
Michael Ungar, Ph.D. is both a family therapist and a Killam Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he co-directs the Resilience Research Centre which coordinates more than five million dollars in funded research in a dozen countries.
Date: Thursday, June 13th
Time: 2:30-4:30 pm
Location: Kelowna Library,1380 Ellis Street, Kelowna
Cost: $20
Co – sponsored by Braintrust Canada and KCR
The June Monthly Bulletin has been released!
Make sure to subscribe to the Monthly Bulletin to stay up-to-date on all of the useful information released each month.
Eight nonprofit organizations have recently added new volunteer positions to the KCR Volunteer Opportunities online listing.
Are you looking to work in an office setting? Volunteer as the Receptionist Support at Kelowna Community Resources.
As a Free Store Manager with Inn from the Cold, you will hone your organizational, supervisory, reporting, and community relational skills. Free Store Greeters assist guests and helps with the sorting and shelving of donated items.
Kelowna Kodiaks Street Soccer Volunteers create safe, fun and energetic street soccer tournaments to our community twice a year with the planning and hands on skills.
If you want to support the mental health of women and their families, give your time to the June 23rd Ride Don’t Hide community bike ride, sponsored by Canadian Mental Health Association and Shoppers Drug Mart.
Event Aid Station Attendants cheer participants while handing out water and food to keep riders nourished during their exertion.
During the ride, Volunteer Runners will ensure that important messages and supplies are delivered to key people at strategic locations.
As riders cross the finish line, the Special Event Support Team will be proud of their work set-up activities.
Do you love getting others involved in a cause? Do you love to tell stories? Global Citizen Kelowna is looking for a Marketing Coordinator.
Perhaps you have watched TV coverage of dragon boats sliding gracefully through the water. There is a place for you in making that event a reality this year by contacting Kelowna Dragon Boat Festival Society.
Are you up for a larger challenge? Consider becoming one of two Co-Run Directors to work with the Run for the Cure Committee sponsored by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
As Co-Run Director, you would focus on either logistics or fundraising and share the leadership role when interacting with other volunteers.
Get more information and contact details at www.kcr.ca, Volunteer Opportunities Search Central Okanagan.
Saturday September 7, 2013, 10:00am-4:00pm
This annual event — now in its 16th year — draws about 80 local non-profit organizations who need volunteers to support the programs and services that make our community a better place to live. They are looking forward to meeting and talking with new volunteers face-to-face and providing all the information they need to find their volunteering ‘home’.
For volunteers, this event represents a one-of-a-kind opportunity to learn about each organization, and how their personal involvement can make a difference in our community. One stop, with all the answers they need to make their choice (Or choices!) on where they will give of their time.
At the Fair, we all come together to help make Kelowna a great place to live!
Location: Parkinson Recreation Centre, 1800 Parkinson Way Kelowna
Map and Directions
Registration Deadline: May 31st
For your convenience, you can now:
Register (please call Dawn at 250.763.8008 x25 as registrations are now over)
I keep bumping into people who are working on strategic plans. Are you thinking strategically about the volunteers in your organization?
Susan Ellis, an internationally renowned expert when it comes to volunteering, challenged my thinking in her “Hot Topics” blog this month on Energize Inc.’s website.
She writes about how volunteers can expand an organization’s brain.
Are you intrigued?
The challenge is to value volunteers as “a core asset in leading the organization towards its goals”.
Ellis describes the thought process for adding one volunteer role for each organizational goal.
Read the organizational goal and then ask yourself, what is the role that can be met by paid staff and what role can volunteers fill? Could volunteer roles be used to expand programming online or in different languages?
Do you currently have paid and volunteer staff to play these roles? How many and what skills are needed by these paid staff and volunteers?
Then ask about financial resources. Which activities need cash and which can be accomplished through donated time, talent and products?
Challenge yourself to broaden your concept of “supporters” to include a variety of ways that community members can get involved with your organization.
Volunteers can be purposely recruited with knowledge and experience that currently does not exist within your organization to build capacity.
Include people from diverse occupations and professions “to establish radiating networks of contacts throughout the community.”
Do your volunteers represent your client base in terms of ethnicity, income, education, demographics or lived experience? If so, they can provide ready planning suggestions and program deliver feedback.
Recognize the involvement of both paid and volunteer staff and share as much as possible about your organization.
Ensure that everyone has an extraordinary experience when they interact with your organization so that they will want to make a commitment to your organization’s vision and mission.
Link
Volunteer Management Hot Topics from Susan J. Ellis: Strategic Volunteer Management: Expanding Your Organization’s Brain
KCR participated in the Valley First Plane Pull for United Way on May 10th.
Every participant on the team dressed in a different outfit as the theme was “…At least we got the time right”.
Thank you to everyone who came out to this wonderful event!
I usually devote this column to volunteer topics but today I want to pass long some thought provoking ideas about giving money to nonprofit organizations.
I recently watched a TED Talks video posted on www.youtube.com. Dan Pallotta spoke on the topic ‘The way we think about charity is dead wrong’.
Pallotta begins by stating that although business will move the bulk of society forward, there remains about 10 percent of the most disadvantaged left behind; some issues have no money measures upon which to build a market.
He goes on to explain that the nonprofit sector then takes over and “philanthropy becomes the market for love”.
This is a startling statement.
Pallotta eloquently speaks about the “dangerous question: What percentage of my donation goes to the cause versus overhead”.
He cleverly summarizes that we do not really want our tombstone to read, “we kept overhead low”.
So what questions should we be asking?
People who want to change the world ask about the scale of a nonprofit’s dreams and how they plan to measure their progress toward those dreams.
People who want to change the world ask what resources are needed to make dreams real, including the cost of overhead.
Pallotta asks, “Who cares about overhead if these problems are actually getting solved?”
The challenge is to develop “generosity of thought” so that nonprofits can expand to meet real, live human need.
And so I ask you.
Are you truly exercising generosity of thought with your financial donation or does your gift have strings attached that tie the hands of nonprofits that are serving the most vulnerable in our society?
If you are looking for a local charity, like Hands in Service whose tagline is Love.Gives.Back., go to www.kcr.ca and click on Community Information Search Central Okanagan.
LINK
TED Talks:Dan Pallotta, The way we think about charity is dead wrong.
Friday May 31, 2013 – Friday May 31, 2013
#120-1735 Dolphin Avenue
Description:
Imagine Canada is coming to Kelowna!
Dr. Michelle Gauthier, VP, Public Policy & Community Engagement, is witnessing first-hand how the nonprofit sector’s relationship with government and the public is changing. Charities and nonprofits are charting their own course, defining priorities to maximize impact, and working together to strengthen their collective voice.
This is occurring at the same time as they are faced with increasing demands for accountability, transparency, and efficacy. Governments, for their part, are considering new funding and delivery models, and re-examining their relationships with nonprofits and, indeed, their own roles.
KCR invites you to join Michelle Gauthier for a presentation and discussion about this changing landscape, how these issues are playing out at the federal level, and the challenges and opportunities that exist for organizations to engage at the local and provincial level.
Space is limited, so reserve your seat for this FREE workshop!
Did you know that volunteering can be good for your heart in more ways than one?
We typically think about how ‘good’ it makes us feel about ourselves and about the impact we are making in the lives of others.
It can also improve physical functioning that affects your heart as a muscle.
In a recent study in JAMA Pediatrics, as reported by Lindsay Abrams in The Atlantic on Feb 26, 2013, the benefits of giving back are compounded.
This BC-based study led by Dr. Hannah Schreier focused on grade ten students in a Vancouver high school who completed required volunteer hours that consisted of spending one hour a week helping elementary school students over a period of 10 weeks.
Risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including body mass index (obesity), inflammation, and cholesterol levels were measured at the beginning and end of each semester.
After 10 weeks, volunteering students recorded lower levels in each risk factor compared to a student control group who were on the waiting list to volunteer.
Improvement in students’ mood, self-esteem and sense of altruism were also recorded. Researchers hypothesized that volunteering provided a protective quality that acted like a support network that youth at high risk for cardiovascular disease often lack.
What were the results? Teens who increased the most in empathy for others and helping behavior also reduced their cardiovascular risk factors the most.
I find this study very interesting because it places volunteerism, even for students who are ‘voluntold’, in the same benefit category as physical exercise.
“If we can engage adolescents in volunteering by making it a standard recommendation akin to physical activity or by incorporating it as a regular part of school curricula, we have the potential of reducing CV risk markers in these adolescents,” wrote researchers (Cardiologytoday March 8, 2013).
Links:
The Atlantic. Study: Volunteering May Improve Cardiovascular Health, Lindsay Abrams Feb 26 2013, 7:56 AM ET
Hannah Schreier, LinkedIn. Effect of volunteering on risk factors for cardiovascular disease in adolescents: a randomized controlled trial, Schreier HM, Schonert-Reichl KA, Chen E. Abstract. JAMA Pediatr. 2013 Apr 1;167(4):327-32. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.1100.
Helio.com, Cardiologytoday. Volunteering: A unique approach to improve teen CV health; Schreier HMC. JAMA Pediatr. 2013;doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.1100; March 8, 2013.
Central Okanagan
